Karkat Vantas
Karkat Vantas, also known by his Trollian handle , is one of the trolls and is one of the main characters in Homestuck. His associated zodiac sign is Cancer (♋️) and he has horns that are rounded instead of pointed (constantly referred to as "nubby horns" or "candy corn"). His emotes display these nubby horns as the capital letter B. For example, a frowning face is depicted as ):B. In addition, both components serve as a form of foreshadowing, as he is a geneticist of sorts (being the creator of the pre-scratch and post-scratch trolls and genetically breeding cancer into Bilious Slick. According to the extended zodiac test, his blood is a mutation of the lime caste and his sign is called the Sign of the Signless, referring to his ancestor's legacy and the method of his demise. Etymology Karkat was a name suggested by beesmygod and Vantas was suggested by hr.morgaes. Karkat comes from "Karkata," the Sanskrit astrological equivalent of Cancer, minus one letter. Additionally, his name may be drawn from "Karkinos," a giant crab from Greek mythology who fought Hercules, also the origin of the Cancer astrological sign. This may mirror his relationship with Gamzee, since, in the myth, Hercules was known to enter great fits of rage and ended up killing his family, similar to how sober Gamzee apparently gains incredible strength and kills his friends. On the other hand, his last name, Vantas, is a prostate cancer treatment drug. Similarly, the Dutch word for cancer is "kanker", and so most Dutch citizens use "KK" as a shorthand for it. This may be a reason why Sollux has given Karkat the nickname . Also, when translated from Hindi, "Karkat" means litter or waste, which may be a reference to him being an outcast because of his blood color. His Trollian handle is a play on the medical term "carcinogenesis" which is the development of cancer in the body, and "carcinology," the study of crustaceans. The first part of his handle might be related to"Karkinos"or "Karkata" which are names for the cancer constellation, like how his first name is possibly related to them. Another plausible explanation is that his chumhandle is a combination of 'carcinogen' (a cancer-inducing substance) and 'geneticist'. "Cancer" can also be defined as "irregular" and "mutated,". Karkat's mutation is likely an allusion to this. Karkat uses the strife specibus sicklekind which is possibly a reference to the ruling planet of Cancer, his associated zodiac sign, the moon, which takes the form of a sickle when crescent. This could also be an allusion to sickle cell anemia, a relatively common genetic disorder that causes blood cells to take a form similar in shape to a sickle. It also ties in with his title as the Knight of Blood. Vantas can be considered like the anagram of the french word "Savant", which can mean "scholar" or "scientist". Biography Hivebent Karkat Vantas is introduced at the opening of Act 5, in his respiteblock. He was not given a name before his sixth Wriggling Day, mirroring John Egbert. He is initially named Bulgereek Nookstain but chops the name entry box in half—much like Dave, Karkat doesn't put up with that bullshit. Karkat is by Sollux, who tells him about Sgrub and appoints him to the Red Team . Angry that he's not the Red Team leader, Karkat messages Terezi and makes himself leader, appointing her second in command. She doesn't really care who leads, having only taken on the role because she didn't think Karkat cared about playing. Karkat begins the game with Terezi as his server player, ignoring Sollux when he (now having realized its devastating implications) him to abort. Out of a desire to spite Sollux, Karkat mocks him for his programming skills and runs the Mobius Double Reacharound Virus, which explodes his computer, blows a hole in the side of his hive, and kills his lusus. Karkat prototypes his sprite kernel with his lusus, creating Crabsprite. He enters the Medium, arriving in the Land of Pulse and Haze. Once Terezi, Gamzee, and Tavros have begun the game (in that order), Karkat looks for a server player for Tavros, attempting to Nepeta. However, her moirail does not permit her to associate with lowbloods, and she declines. Sometime later, Karkat meets Jack Noir on LOPAH, who stabs him in a failed attempt to shut him up. Karkat continues talking, now worried about the unusual color of his mutant blood. Jack reveals that he, too, has candy red blood, and he and Karkat form a bond of sorts, becoming in cahoots and formulating a plan together to exile the Black Queen. Jack Noir reveals a weakness of the Black Queen to the Red Team: once a frog is prototyped, vanity will make her refuse to wear her ring out of refusal to bear its face. With this information, the Red Team carries out Operation Regisurp, successfully exiling the Black Queen and leading her to ultimately become . To carry out this plan Karkat needs a team member with psychic abilities, so he is forced to recruit Vriska. Later, Kanaya also joins the Red Team. Karkat starts distributing memos through Trollian's time-travel memo feature to try to order people around, but these memos end up hopelessly muddled by various interjections from the other trolls (and even Karkat himself in other points of the timeline). He witnesses the last moments of Sollux Captor this way, as he was gruesomely killed by the Vast Glub, but thinks he's joking. He becomes very distraught once he sees his friend's lifeless body, and then disgusted as Feferi kisses him. He is the trolls' ectobiologist, referencing the fact that the sign Cancer is heavily associated with motherhood. Karkat paradoxically creates all twelve of them in the The Veil as well their ancestors. Eventually he kills his denizen in the planet. Karkat also assists Kanaya with frog breeding. However, in a rush to fight the Black King, they skip the final frog required for Bilious Slick's genetic sequence. Later he speculates that, by doing so, he , fearing that its missing line of genetic code accounted Jack Noir's actions, and led to the failure of the kids' session. Over the Sgrub session, the majority of which is unseen, Karkat genuinely becomes the leader of the trolls, gaining at least some of their respect. After the battle with the Black King, he is the one to reach for the door leading to the Ultimate Reward, before being interrupted. Post-Hivebent Upon Jack's arrival the army of doomed Aradiabots bought the trolls time by taking on Jack, and all end . As this happens, Aradiabot transports the trolls to the same meteor upon which Karkat had created them, where they find a computer lab. Later Dream Karkat recognizes the demon to be Jack Noir on Prospit, but is soon killed along with the other Prospit dreamers. He remains asleep for an hour, but now he dreams of the Horrorterrors in the Furthest Ring. Upon waking Karkat forbids the trolls to sleep. He finds out the trolls have come into contact with the humans while he was asleep, but dismisses them as irrelevant. At some point later Karkat finally realizes that their misfortune was caused by a Jack Noir from the kids' session and blames them for the trolls' current predicament. He decides to get payback by trolling the kids, and gives an inspirational speech about this plan. He first trolls John at the very end of his trollian timeline, when he is ready to initiate the Scratch. Karkat is perplexed when he responds to his diatribe with friendly excitement (as John had already been trolled by Karkat throughout the duration of his session). When he expresses black feelings, however, John cannot reciprocate, as he is . Karkat is so embarrassed that he decides to troll John backwards through his timeline, so as to avoid talking to a version of John that knows how he feels. In Karkat's second conversation with John he explains that by prototyping Becquerel Jade , making their session unwinnable. The scratch in their session created a rift in paradox space that allowed Jack Noir in. He continues to troll John backwards through his timeline, becoming more and more friendly towards him and explaining aspects of the game, such as ectobiology, as well as discussing some of their shared interests. At some point, Karkat John and Jade at numerous points in their lives pre-Sburb, heavily antagonizing himself to them. They work together to develop a plan for the kids to initiate the Scratch. Later, Karkat witnesses Eridan killing Feferi and Kanaya and KO'ing Sollux. He attempts to revive Kanaya with a kiss afterwards, which may have contributed to her later vampirism (as he is the Knight of Blood). He is contacted by Gamzee, who had run out of pies and becomes sober (and homicidal by extension). Freaked out by this, he takes an unconscious Sollux with him to hide from Gamzee. Soon after he wakes, however, they are separated. He starts believing he is in a doomed timeline, since Kanaya was supposedly dead, yet he had talked to her in the future. Some time later he continues a memo to talk to Jade, explaining to her that he gave their universe "cancer" and is sorry for it. He is then contacted again by future Kanaya. Shortly after Vriska's death at Terezi's hands, he also arrives on the roof with a letter written in Gamzee's blood using a combination of Terezi's QU1RK and his own, then is seen embracing Terezi. Afterward, when Gamzee arrives to confront the other four survivors, he successfully shooshpaps Gamzee out of his bloodthirsty rage, becoming his moirail and smiling for the first time seen in-comic; he later mentions to John that for whatever reason he doesn't want to talk about what he did to Gamzee. The three-year journey The five trolls depart for the Green Sun when the path to it became visible from their session; Sollux propells their meteor there at incredible speed, the strain half-killing him. Once there, they are met by Dave, Rose, Aradia and the half-dead Sollux. They travel to the post-scratch session with WV for three years, leaving Aradia and Sollux behind. 1 year into the journey he has a discussion with a future self where it's revealed everyone else on the meteor is aware of his blood colour. While passing trought dream bubbles he eventually meets his dancestor. Upon finally arriving the new session, Jade, who is under control of the Condesce, takes Karkat and Kanaya to LOFAF. she and Jane request them to retrieve the Genesis Frog from Echidna, as said denizen refuses to speak to Jade. When Karkat refuses, he is impaled by Jane to demonstrate her ability to bring people back to life, followed by a . When Aranea's plan to change the alpha timeline is moved to LOFAF, Karkat informs the other players of what is happening there. He and Kanaya witness Gamzee beating Terezi near to death, followed by Karkat charging in an attempt to stop him, but instead is stabbed in the chest twice and pushed into the surrounding lava by Gamzee where he burns to death. New Timeline In the new timeline made by John's retcons Karkat is shown travelling in the meteor with his previous companions as well as with Vriska this time. Unlike the original trip, he develops a much closer relationship with Dave as they no longer compete over Terezi (who seems to have spent most of her time with Vriska). They were known to be in some sort of relationship as implied by Rachel Whatpumpkin, and later in . Karkat is seen on the kids' victory platform with everyone else, and after John and Roxy arrive he talks to most people there. As Vriska explains to everyone the main threats in the session, she assigns Karkat and Kanaya instead to retrieve the genesis frog by talking to Echidna. After Kanaya talks to the denizen and they have a conversation she knocks him unconscious, to protect him from the threats. In Karkat's dream he runs into Meenah, whom enlists him into her ghost army to defeat [[Lord English|